economic development

We are all aware of the statistics: cities are home to more than 50% of the world’s population, and they are growing so fast that 66 out of 100 people on earth will be urban dwellers by 2050. This, of course, will have major implications for people and poverty, climate change, and service delivery.

Currently, cities generate more than 80% of global GDP. Since the early 2000s, three-quarters of the world’s 750 largest cities have grown faster than their national economies. One of the key reasons for those cities’ success is higher productivity—as a result of their ability to attract skilled workers—as well as a high concentration of productive entrepreneurs and firms.

For decades, national and city leaders have also taken actions to build competitive cities, increasingly facilitating firms and industries to create jobs, raise productivity, and increase incomes over time—especially for the urban poor. They see this as the pathway to eliminate extreme poverty and to promote shared prosperity. This is particularly important in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where most of the world’s extreme poor live.

Fear of openly confronting politics can come in the way of achieving economic development goals. To help address this problem, the Development Research Group of the World Bank prepared a report synthesizing the vanguard of economics research on the functioning of political markets to understand the implications. It yields insights for strengthening existing transparency and citizen engagement policies with potentially powerful consequences for economic development everywhere, in poor and rich countries alike.

​When I was teaching at the University of Indonesia, my country was the poster child for economic development. Indonesia was growing robustly – as high as 9% in the 1990s. Poverty was falling. But Indonesia was rife with corruption, cronyism, nepotism and fear under President Suharto’s authoritarian rule. Parliament had no checks and balances. There was no accountability or transparency. A few powerful families controlled the economy. The financial crisis in 1998 triggered the nationwide student protests — known as the "reformasi" movement. I joined the students demanding change. We protested until Suharto resigned.

Citizens in Nigeria participate in a
readiness assessment exercise to identify
high-priority datasets
Around the world, governments, entrepreneurs and established businesses are seeing the economic growth potential of using Open Data – data from government and other sources that can be downloaded, used and reused without charge.

As a public resource, Open Data can help launch new private-sector ventures and help existing businesses create new products and services and optimize their operations. Government data – a leading source of Open Data – can help support companies in healthcare, agriculture, energy, education, and many other industries.

​In addition, government agencies can be most helpful to the private sector if they understand the unique needs of the businesses that currently or could potentially use their data.

The World Bank has used the Open Data Readiness Assessment (ODRA) in more than 20 countries to provide an overall evaluation of a country’s Open Data ecosystem. With that information and insight, government agencies can identify strengths and opportunities for making their Open Data more useful and effective. The ODRA covers essential components of any national Open Data program, including:

When I was a teenager, I went hiking in the French Alps. When I arrived at the top, the view was magnificent. It was like a picture postcard with the sun glimmering off the snow under a clear, blue sky.

Vietnam’s economic emergence is perhaps best experienced along its rural roads: more than 175,000 kilometers of pavement, rubble and dirt track extend to two-thirds of the country’s population, including nearly all of the poorest people, who live among its productive farms, lush forests and meandering river valleys.

In recent years, road investments in Vietnam’s rural areas have improved socioeconomic development and promoted gender equity, social participation, improved school attendance, and more inclusive health services to impoverished regions. However, all but a few hundred communes remain off-grid, and infrastructural roadblocks and bureaucratic potholes have delayed the goal of a fully integrated road system.

The World Bank’s Third Rural Transport Project (RTP3) supported a win-win solution: employing ethnic minority women to sustainably manage road maintenance through an innovative participatory approach to local development. This blog entry describes the experience of improving the roads — and women’s lives — in rural Vietnam. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way:

Lesson 1: Solutions can come from unexpected sources.
The RTP3 task team’s investigation showed that up to a third of the population in Vietnam’s Northern Uplands provinces would be expected to contribute up to 10 percent of their total annual household expenditure to ensure safe passage along local roads — too much for most to afford. Furthermore, even when adequate resources are made available for maintenance, contractors have sometimes been unwilling to work in inaccessible regions for fear of mudslides during the rainy season.

Note: This blog entry was adapted from an original submission for the PPIAF Short Story Contest. It is part of a series highlighting the role of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in projects and other transformative work around the world.

For the most part, protected areas in Brazil are managed by the public sector. As a result, like other countries, these areas face conservation difficulties, including a lack of resources for maintenance and other initiatives.Gruta de Maquiné, part of the Peter Lund
Cave Route. Photo: Francisco Martins/flickr
Because of this lack of public-sector financial and human resources, the private sector has provided a significant portion of funding for managing protected areas. One of these cases is in Brazil’s Minas Gerais State. The Secretary of State for Environment and Sustainable Development (SEMAD), Forest State Institute (IEF) and Public-Private Partnership Central Unit collaborated to develop a PPP model focused on management, conservation and operation of three protected areas, located in the State’s Karst region: PPP Peter Lund Cave Route.

The PPP Peter Lund Cave Route aims to structure a single, singular national and international tourist track, aligning the unique natural and cultural elements of the karst region. This new management model is demonstrating results for conservation and sustainable development, including the mobilization of public policies that value one of Brazil’s greatest characteristics: biodiversity.

The emergence of local capacity in the construction sector has long been regarded as critical for economic development. Indeed, since the early 1970s, the World Bank has provided a “civil works preference” for low income countries in Bank-financed projects in order to foster the expansion of domestic construction industries. In most regions of the world, the emergence of domestic capacity in civil works goes hand-in-hand with regional development trajectories. Large construction companies bid for, and win, contracts in their own and neighboring countries.

As I get ready to head back to Washington DC after a visit to The Netherlands, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to share with you some thoughts on sustainable logistics.

While some of you might be familiar with the term, transport logistics refers to the services, knowledge and infrastructure that allow for the free movement of goods and people.

In today’s globalized economies, logistics is recognized as a key driver of competitiveness and economic development. And as policy making turns its attention to promoting sustainable growth paths, valuing scarce resources, and minimizing environmental impacts, sustainable logistics is indeed a key nexus point.

Efficient logistics systems are a precondition for regions, countries, cities and businesses to participate in the global economy, boost growth, and improve the living conditions of millions of people.

That’s why this topic is so important for the World Bank’s mission and our client countries in the transport sector. And that’s why this week in The Hague we organized, together with the government of The Netherlands and partners like Dinalog, the Dutch Institute for Advanced Logistics, our first Conference on Sustainable Logistics.

Multilateral organizations and Southern Europe can do more to cooperate to restore these countries’ global competitiveness

One of the lessons learned from the past few years is that economic development processes are reversible. The once-bright southern Europe economies are languishing today, wrapped in a slow and painful process of adjustment aimed at restructuring their productive sectors and enter once and for all into the 21st century economy.

It’s clear that these countries’ recovery will not be achieved simply with reforming their administrative and regulatory frameworks. Perhaps one of the most complex issues that Italy, Portugal, and Spain are currently dealing with is the interruption of credit flows to the real economy. This interruption is doing considerable harm to the countries of southern Europe; the credit shortage is affecting their competitiveness and jeopardizing any possible hint of improvement, putting the overall global economic recovery at risk.